


Kill Your Heroes

by Everlind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Beating someone up for their own good johnkat style, M/M, Painful Choices, Quadrant Blurring, Sacrifice, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I <i>hate you</i>,” you repeat. </p><p>John tilts his head. “Yeah?” he goes.</p><p>“Yes,” you snarl at him.</p><p>“Good,” he says and then he <i>flies</i> at you with such blinding speed you can’t even raise your sickles in time.</p><p>--<br/>Because nothing is fair. Not even winning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kill Your Heroes

 

_I say ya kill your heroes and_  
 _Fly, fly, baby don't cry._  
 _No need to worry cause_  
 _Everybody will die._  
 _Every day we just_  
 _Go, go, baby don't go._  
 _Don't you worry we_  
 _Love you more than you know._

 

 

There are simply no words to describe what you feel standing before the door a second time. You remember the first time. Euphoria. Suffused with this all encompassing, self-satisfied sense of triumph bordering on being giddy with it. It had been such a glorious moment. You’d been so proud.

The Ultimate Reward.

Within arm’s reach for the second time.

You’ve never been as weary and heartsick as you are now. The incipishphere looks exactly the same. The victory platform looks exactly the same. Just like last time, a Sburb logo looms over you, perched at the very edge. This one is red, the shape is that of a human hive, but the door at the base is similar, with the same glowing spherical doorknob.  

Nobody says a single fucking word. Makes not a single damn move to open the wretched thing, despite knowing that every single person left (so little, too little, failed them, you failed them failed them failed them _failed them_ , hurting, dying, dead GONE. you failed them) wants nothing more than to finally end this.

Just.

end it

“Who’d like to do the honours?” Jane suggests, voice commendably calm seeing as she’s missing an arm. Red blooms bright on the makeshift bandage around her shoulder. The colour of it doesn’t even faze you.

Silence.

There’s the vast nothing where everything begins, Jake’s ragged panting and an occasional hitching noise from Rose.

“Alright,” Jane nods, chin high, and very carefully moves her body towards it, every step a jolt that squeezes more blood out through the ragged stump.

You lick your lips. They’re so fucking dry and your tongue is leaden. Like you’re wrung out, nothing left. Empty. It’s important that you speak up now, so you force your squawk blister into functioning. Your voice comes out sounding like it was dragged over glass shards, before being hung out to dry until it got all nice and crusty.

“Wait.”

Jane turns to look at you, slowly. Her eyes are fever bright with pain.

“Wait,” you repeat, voice cracking. “One of us has to stay behind.”

All of them are looking at you now. They’re all so different, not even the same species. But they’re all hurting. You know they are as tired as you feel. The bone-weary sense of having gone so far beyond your limit you can’t quite remember how it felt to ever be fucking dumb enough to think you had one.

“What do you mean?”  Terezi asks, confused. The area where her eyes used to be is a ruin of charred flesh and- god, you don’t want to think about what might be crusted on her cheekbones - _it’s her eyes or what’s left of them you know it is, boiled straight out of the beautiful face you love so dearly couldn’t help her failed her, again—_ “Karkat?” she prompts.

“No,” Rose says, surprisingly firm for all that her face is bathed in tears. Seers. Roxy wraps an arm around her shoulders, tucks a lock of blonde behind her ear. Rose lets her. Good. She needs a- she’s human, they don’t need them, but it’s the same, a little, just maybe, like when Gamzee held you when you thought Sollux had died. Again.

Fuck. And Sollux hadn’t even been your matesprit. 

Oh, Kanaya.

Kanaya. 

“When we” —fuck, _Kanaya_ — “we went to retrieve the Genesis Frog from Echidna we were told” — _we_ — “that one of us would have to stay.”

“Stay where?” Terezi asks, tipping her head sideways.

“Behind,” you say. “Here. As a- an impetus to kickstart the new universe.”

“That’s bullshit,” Dirk says. “This was never an requirement before.”

“It was The Choice it offered us in return for the goddamn Genesis Tadpole. It required Jade to bring all the planets of their session to the new one, which she went and did. So when we faced it there were new terms in effect, I suppose. What the fuck do you want me to say?” that last is a ragged shout of pure frustration. Like hearing that wasn’t the single most horrible thing to consider and Kanaya had wanted to refuse, again, but there was no goddamn wretched second to spare so you accepted.

What fucking alternative did you even have, anyway?

None whatsoever, is what.

It sucked turgid, lopsided seedflap, but yeah. If you have to choose between everybody fucking dies, lalalala that’s all folks go home THE FUCKING END and just _you_ -yeah.

Easy as sopor pie. 

After everything’s said and done, it’s a small price to pay.

“No,” Rose goes and it sounds like pure misery.

“Who-“ Roxy begins and then snaps her mouth shut like the word burned her. “No,” she agrees.

You rub at your face, feeling the grime on your palm catch on the dirt stuck on your skin. “By all rights it ought to be me,” you assure them.

“Karkat, _NO_!” Terezi snaps, turning towards you fully.

“Bullshit,” Dave hisses. His lips are white and you can see a sliver of his red eyes through the fractured lenses of his shades.

And then, for the first time since arriving, John speaks up. “Why?”

Heads turn towards him. He’s just standing there, expression guileless and bland, nary a scratch on him. Vriska blinks at him, nervously twisting the ring around her finger over and over and over. 

“What do you mean: ‘why’?” you snarl at him.

A shrug. There’s a peculiar expression on his face. “Why you?”

“Because I’m your goddamn leader is fucking why, you dumb shitlick.” 

Dark brows hitch a bit. “Leader, huh?” John says almost cheerfully. “Then it should be me.”

It’s such a non sequitur that you just glare at him. At that moment it truly makes absolutely no damn sense to you, it’s just John expelling random asinine bovine faecal matter from his ignorance tunnel.

“John…” Vriska goes, eyes wide.

“Whoa, hang on,” Dave interjects, walking towards the two of you with his hands raised placatingly. “Let’s not get hasty here.”

“Yeah,” Davesprite chimes in. It’s fucking eerie, hearing them speak in stereo like that. It’s a little off, too, with Dave having three years on his feathery counterpart. “Let me do it. Seeing as you two are our shiny examples of leaderlyness and I’m not eve-“

“Shut up, Dave,” you and John say in perfect unison.

John’s… still looking at you. You look straight back at him. “Well, let’s fight for it,” he says, grinning his dorky teeth bare like a challenge. “Winner stays behind.”

 

* _STRIFE!_ *

You deftly twirl your sickles around your wrists and consider your opponent.

Realise that John went from runty, weedy dweeb to a tall and filled out dweeb. No surprise. As hideous as Zillyhoo may appear in all its multicoloured gaudiness, it is still really. fucking. _huge_. John’s just standing there. Tall, calm and unmoving, the massive hammer braced casually against his right shoulder.

Fuck. You’re going to have to take him seriously. 

There’s one significant advantage you’ve got. John’ll definitely push you around and intimidate you, but there’s no way he’ll be able to bring himself to actually hurt you. Whereas you have no qualms about doing so, even if it means taking off a limb. As long as he lives. You need him to.

He has to. They all have to.

You start to circle. The continuous arc of your sickles begins to blur. John doesn’t even bother to turn with you, smug asshole that he is. He’s watching you though, blue eyes tracking your progress towards his left side. Seizing him up you decide you’ll have to rely on speed. His hammer is cumbersome, swinging it takes an additional show of power as well as simply more time to complete the stroke. You’re fast and vicious, in-slash-back but his reach is better than yours.

Your friends are forming a ring around the two of you, stretched out and full of gaps, yes, but unbroken. It reminds you of Alternian death matches, an annual sporting event that was incredibly popular. Fatality (please not).

John looks almost bored. 

Even though his head is angled towards you, he refuses to actually fucking look at you -utterly scornful of your challenge. Like you can’t possibly pose a threat to him. Be a danger to him. And that hurts like a bitch, it really does, even when you fully well know half the connotations are lost on him. He doesn’t even _have_ horns, so what does he even fucking care, but suddenly yours seem so damn useless: too small and rounded to make much of a display, lost in the wild tangle of your hair. Even your fangs are average at best, your claws nothing to boast about.

John’s got no horns, blunt teeth and chews his nails, it’s disgraceful and he doesn’t even fucking _look_ at you. 

You are starting to get angry.

By the time you’ve completely circled him  -useless piece of shit didn’t even acknowledge you when you were at his back, you’ll make sure he’ll regret that- you’ve edged a little closer, but he’s still standing there.

“What are you waiting for,” John asks. “Come at me, bro.”

And he crooks is fingers at you like troll Bruce Lee.

Making a joke out of it. You grit your teeth, incensed that he’s spinning this out to be some sort of elaborate farce. How can he not take this seriously? You’re fighting to see who gets to stay behind and die and he’s _smiling_.  You’re going to take a record-breaking dump on that pestilential bulge sucker’s attitude and teach him a fucking lesson that’ll make him cry for his dead lusus.

There’s this moment where you are poised at the very edge of action, all your muscles tense and ready, singing. You throw yourself forward, sickles ready and hooked.

You were wrong. So wrong.

John’s not slow at all. He’s fast. Before you can even reach him you can tell, how his own body reacts to yours advancing. Easily. And then you don’t reach him at all. John’s hammer casually swings out to connect with your ribs. Something cracks inside. More things crack when you hit the ground -flat on your back. The wind is knocked out of you and the back of your thinkpan snaps against the platform. Hard. For a moment you can only lie there, dazed and the contents of your digestive sack roiling.  

Shit. _Shit_. How could you even be dumb enough to think he wasn’t serious? You saw this egregious smear of discharge grow up, dammit. Of course he’s serious.

John’s serious.

And the horrible part is that he’s still fucking serious when he appears in your line of vision to stand over you. “Alright there, buddy? Need a break? Take a Kit Kat? Eheheheh.” 

Even without having any shitlicking idea what the hell he’s talking about it pisses you off. You get up. Your body aches. John raises an eyebrow.

“Fuck you,” you say.

It’s all you can manage. When you spit out a wad of saliva flecked with blood you can hear people gasp. Trolls. They knew. Of course they knew. But what you just did is fucking obscene. Fuck that. You’re going to fucking win and then you’re going to fucking die and it won’t matter anymore.

John nods.

When you go for him a second time you tell yourself that if you accidentally disembowel him he’ll just do his weirdass God Tier glowy thing and revive. It’ll be heroic, when is John anything _but_ and you’re not going to fucking hold back because he’s not allowed to die for you.

Your fury seems to take him by surprise. You go down and under the wild whirl of his hammer, gather your legs under you and leap at him. And it’s -it’s weird and frightening how blue his eyes are, the innocent surprise in them as you haul out your sickles towards this unprotected belly. He doesn’t move. You thought he’d move.

Why doesn’t he move.

You hit him, horrified as your weapon hooks into him, into his stomach, sinking in smooth and true as though like he’s made from solidified fatbeast emulsion, so easy as you rip into his insides and no, no no _no_.

Hooks into air. With nothing there for the momentum of your blade to sink into and catch hold, your shoulder wrenches painfully and you stumble, trip and go down on a knee. The world jolts and the horrified faces of your friends swim before your eyes.

“Missed me again,” John chuckles, reforming right before you. 

Heir of Breath.

Right. 

He fights dirty. He taunts you, ridicules you and goes insubstantial only to whisper in your hear ducts, snatches of his voice you can’t catch. Ruffles your hair and flicks your nose, tickles your sides, laughs as he trips you up. Your rage is like spitting oil, boiling hot and dangerous but also making you sloppy in your fury as your scream in rage at him to _fight. fucking. fair -you coward, you fucking coward stand still and fight me._

“I am,” John says, rolling his eyes. “Not my fault your so sloooooooow.” 

You move and then he isn’t there, so you skid to a halt, whirl to see where he-eeaaAAA _AAH._

Kicking feebly, you are lifted into the air as your throat explodes into agony. Your hands scrabble at the bar crushing your windpipe, pinning you against John’s front as he chokes you with Zillyhoo. You can’t breathe. Can’t _breathe_. You panic, draw blood as you try to pry away the handle, your claws slicing ribbons of skin out of the back of John’s hands. He’s solid now, so solid, warm against your back and unyielding. You can’t breathe. Wetness streaks your cheeks and you struggle, try to kick him, but black spots swim before your eyes.

Something slides across the platform with a metallic whine and you distantly realise John’s kicking away your sickles, even as he keeps you up off the ground, crushing you into him as he crushes the air out of you.

“Please,” he whispers into your hair, lips brushing against your right horn. “Just give up.”

“… _fuck you_ ,” you wheeze, baring your teeth in defiance even as the strength drains from you.

John inhales sharply, Heir of Breath, shifts his grip and holds on as you fight him -for him- every painful wretched moment you have left before blacking out at long last.

 

You come to lying on your back and throat pounding miserably, something soft and blue pillowed under your head. Blackness arches overhead and muted red light spills across the platform. As you push yourself upright, you fear you might vomit, everything hurts so much and your head goes numb as white hot pain lances through it. 

John’s got his arms around Dave and Rose, both of them at once, dark head bowed over their blond ones.

The door is open. 

You are just in time to see Dirk and Terezi help Jake hobble through it with only one leg, the ragged stump twitching with sudden jerks as it tries to walk for him. The doorway is bright white, but no light spills forth. It looks solid and swallows them up as they pass through it -they’re gone.

Whatever he said or did while you were out, you’ve no idea, but Vriska leaves with tears in her eyes -one nod to John, who raises his hand in return. They go, one by one, leaving him behind. All of them. They cry and embrace him and even kiss him, but they say nothing at all.

Nobody but Davesprite.

“John, this is fucking dumb,” he says, wings tucked close against his back. “Let me stay.”

“Dave,” John intones warningly.

“No, shut up, I wasn’t finished. I am a fucking game construct. I’ll probably just- I don’t know, not be able to exist in this new universe. It’s- it’s. It shouldn’t be you. You already died once for real in my life, you asshole, I won’t let that happen again.” His hands are scaled and tipped with talons, they’re hooked in frustration. “Let me stay.”

John shakes his head. “No can do dude,” he replies, flat. “Besides. If what you just said is true, then it won’t count if you stay behind, either, because you’re part of the game. I’m not taking any chances.”  

Davesprite’s wings raise, flare out, then droop as his shoulders go slack with defeat. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” John mumbles, pawing at his face tiredly. “Just go.”

“Should I-“ a hand sweeps towards you and both heads turn towards you.

“Oh,” John goes, seeing you are conscious.

“Leave,” you tell Davesprite. Your voice is a strangled croak, hurts your squeal pipette on the way out.

He turns towards John in question. John shrugs. 

“Fine,” he says softly, nodding to himself. Holds up his fist after a moment’s consideration for John to bump. John stares at it. “Don’t leave a bro hanging,” Davesprite says. The words shake. Instead of bumping it John grips his wrist and tugs him in for a hug, wrapping his arms around him.

Wings fold around them for a moment and then he drifts apart from him, sparing neither of you a single glance as he turns away. Nothing happens as he passes through the door, except that his absence means both of you are alone.

Finally.

John’s got his hands in his pockets as he stands regarding you with casual interest. Your sickles lie nearby and you grab them, before pushing yourself up to stand. Face him once more.

John clicks his tongue. “You already lost, dumbass, and you’d just lose again. Just go away, Karkat.”

Dismissing you again. A growl spills past your teeth. “If you’d faced me properly and not like a spineless sack of zephyrous flatulence, I’d fucking kick your useless self-sacrificing ass and we both fucking know it.”

“Hah,” John laughs softly. “Du’h. Should lay down the rules first next time, then.”

“THERE WON’T _BE_ A FUCKING NEXT TIME, YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF BULGEROT!”

A sigh. Like you’re a petulant child, no other reaction than that. “Whatever, man. Are you leaving already or not?”

And something inside you breaks, more than it already was, more than he’s already broken, because this whole time he’s treated you like a nuisance and he never takes anything seriously and now he’s just telling you to go.

“I HATE YOU!”

The scream is torn from you with enough violence to sear your abused squawk blister. You mean it. You’ve never been as sure of anything as much as you’ve been now, in this backwards-inside-out disaster at the end of time. Like seeing him the first time all over again, clogging your eyes and mouth and nose and ears and flooding your senses you _hate_ him, your kismesis, destined after all, stupid and terrible and brave and better than you. This stupid precious loathsome pink alien creature borne from the perfect paradise planet you created— you hate him.

“I _hate_ you,” you repeat. 

John tilts his head. “Yeah?” he goes.

“Yes,” you snarl at him.

“Good,” he says and then he _flies_ at you with such blinding speed you can’t even raise your sickles in time.

He kisses you.

John kisses you. Hands like ice cupping your face and it’s a bad kiss, his first kiss, your first kiss and he doesn’t know how. His lips are too hard with determination and yours too soft with surprise, you don’t match at all. You drop your sickles, hands gripping at the air uselessly, before going to clench at his shoulders instead. 

And

and

it’s _black_

it’s black and red and pale and ashen 

Like John’s hand wiped through one of your empty shipping grids, making one big smear of all your quadrants, this blurry, undefinable result that crawls in through your eyes and slithers down into your body to nibble at the bees assaulting the insides of your belly. Wetness spills down his cheeks and everything within you roils in response, overwhelming pity and fury and annoyance and the need to protect— and you think he’s been scared all along and the only way to deal with it was dismissing it, rolling his eyes at it, trying to send you away before you’d see.

“John, shoosh,” you say into his mouth as you pet his terrible hair, bursting with the need to wipe the sadness from his face and protect him, even as you want to shove him and scream at him to grow a pair, but he’s not your kismesis and he’s not your matesprit or moirail or auspistice.

He’s that and more and nothing. He’s John.

So you hold him, feeling the wet heat of his face against the side of your head and his cold hands are still cradling your jaw. You have one hand wound into the fabric between his posterior thoracic plates, the other massaging the nape of his neck. You have never felt so confused and destroyed and _calm_ ever. Even though you have no idea if John feels anything at all, or if he’s just young and scared and about to die, it doesn’t matter.

You press lips against his forehead. “I’ll stay with you.”

“No,” John says.

“Not your goddamn right to decide,” you growl at him, claws pricking the soft, unprotected skin at his hairline. 

His body shakes as he laughs softly. John pulls back to look at you, hands softly drifting down the side of your throat, to touch along your shoulders before sliding towards your chest to settle over a pectoral each. He’s facing the door directly over your head. The light and hue of it colours his irises tyrian purple. 

“Well,” he says softly. His thumb traces the pulse of your bloodpusher. “Too damn bad.”

John smiles.

Too late do you realise what he’s about to do. The ’NO!’ is snatched from your lips as he blasts you backwards through the door.

White.

Everything goes

w h i t e

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue.

 

The sky is a gorgeous shade of blue.

Deeper than the skies of Skaia, brighter than even the most starlit night on Alternia, clearer than a summer morning on Earth. 

Beautiful. You blink up at it, unwilling to move. It doesn’t burn your eyes. A pleasant breeze races playfully through the swaying golden grass and ruffles your hair. 

“Karkat!”

You sit up, blink.

Jade comes running towards you, black hair trailing out behind her in the wind. “Karkat!” she yells, laughing.

“No, wait _AUGRK_ -“  your breath is knocked out of you as she tackles you flat onto your back, arms flinging around your shoulders. 

She’s alive.

Jade’s alive.

Someone’s laughing and it’s definitely Jade, but maybe also you and she’s alive in your arms. Her hands are warm as she helps you to your feet, grinning as she brushes grass from your clothes and if you sort of end up hugging again for the sheer joy of it— well. 

“Where-?” you go, looking around you. The grass is golden and the sky is blue. Nothing hurts. Jade is alive.

“D’you like it?” she asks.

Is this-? Is this?!

Jade pokes your cheek and then closes your maw for you with two fingers. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she snickers, rocking on her heels. “Say, what took you so long? We waited for ages, stupid, we were seriously worried.”  

“I—“ you… you what, exactly? “I was -something I needed to—“

You can’t remember. 

You stand there, in this amazing new universe you created, the wind in your hair and the sun warming your skin under an endless blue sky. You can’t remember.

Jade sees your rapidly developing frown and nudges your shoulder. “It’s not important,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re safe.”

“No,” you spit out vehemently, perplexed under the sudden rush of emotion bubbling up in you. “No, it—“

it is important, you don’t say, because you can’t remember.

And then you forget what you were saying entirely because there’s people walking through the golden grass towards you. Dave and Rose. Sollux. Tavros. Jane. Feferi. Meenah. Gamzee. The Mayor. A man with a pipe. A troll girl with whispy white hair. 

At the head of them -oh.

“Kanaya,” your lips form her name without any actual sound.

Kanaya’s alive.

“ _KANAYA!_ ” you yell and take off running towards her. The wind buffets you in the back and it feels like flying.

 

 

*

_Never let your fear decide your fate._

**Author's Note:**

> Kill Your Heroes by AWOLNATION
> 
> Many thanks to nerdish and [Pi](http://thepioden.tumblr.com) for their support and help.  
> Pi came up with 'solidified beastfat emulsion' and 'Posterior thoracic plates'
> 
> ART FOR KILL YOUR HEROES:  
> [Winning isn't fair by bluearturtle](http://bluearturtle.tumblr.com/post/76036390607/after-reading-this-throws-laptop-half-away-the)  
> 


End file.
